Army veteran Verne Amundson, 80, sits and enjoys a drink at the Orange County Veterans Club in Brea on Tuesday morning. Amundson agreed heartily with the passage of the Stolen Valor law.

Army veteran Verne Amundson, 80, laughs at a joke at the Orange County Veterans Club in Brea on Tuesday morning. Amundson and other Orange County veterans meet there each morning to enjoy drinks and swap stories.

Army veteran Verne Amundson, 80, left, and former Marine Bill Richards, 77, enjoy drinks and swap stories and memories from their time in the armed forces at the Veterans Club in Brea Tuesday morning. Richards and Amundson all support the law.

Various badges decorate the walls of the Orange County Veterans Club at 735 S. Brea Blvd. in Brea.

A "Budweiser salutes the Army" decal decorates the bar at the Veterans Club in Brea.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Bill Richards, 77, says farewell for the afternoon to friends and fellow veterans Bob Schou, 74, left, and Ken Vanderlin, 74, right, at the Veterans Club in Brea on Tuesday morning. All three veterans agree with the passage of the law.

They knew him as Jim – a man who, for months, wandered into the bar at the North Orange County Veterans Club and told stories about his time as a U.S. Marine Corps drill instructor and honors for being wounded in combat.

But Kenny Vanderlin was suspicious.

A former Marine sergeant who served for six years beginning in 1959, Vanderlin said he remembered how the man said he’d been a drill instructor for six months. Vanderlin said that was impossible – that drill instructors do two-year stints. Other patrons of the club began poking holes in his claims and eventually, they said, he simply stopped coming around the Brea bar.

Only a handful said they’d even seen him within the past month.

“I just think it’s disgraceful to put himself with those who actually served this country,” Vanderlin said. “It’s complete disrespect.”

The man, however, was acting within the rights of free speech as dictated by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year in which the justices voted 6-3 that lying about honors obtained during military service was protected.

On Monday, President Barack Obama signed into law the latest iteration of the so-called Stolen Valor law that makes it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to profit from falsely claiming service in the military.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, said Congress and the president managed to take the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the original 2006 law and more narrowly define it as a fraudulent money-making scheme instead of a lying-for-the-sake-of-lying scheme.

“What makes the bill constitutional is it focuses on fraud in the sense of trying to gain financial benefit – money, a government contract or government benefits,” Volokh said. “That has long been held to be constitutionally unprotected.”

The debate over falsifying claims of combat honors centered on Xavier Alvarez, who served on an Inland Empire water board and publicly claimed in 2007 to be a Medal of Honor recipient during a 25-year career in the military. He was prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act that was signed by President George W. Bush.

The Alvarez case became the center of the Supreme Court decision, in which Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote “while the government’s interest in protecting the integrity of the Medal of Honor is beyond question, the First Amendment requires that there be a direct causal link between the restriction imposed and the injury to be prevented. Here, that link has not been shown.”

Veterans, however, saw plenty of injury with those who not only lie about getting medals not earned but people who claim military service but never enlisted.

Sipping on a Budweiser around the bar while a couple of veterans shot pool and the members of different branches took comical jabs at one another, Verne Amundson sat quietly and listened. He was a U.S. Army specialist and, when it was his turn to voice his opinion on the matter, it came straight and unfiltered like a Clint Eastwood character.

“It’s crap,” he said in a low voice. “Guys who do this are looking for rewards or glory. I don’t think people should do that crap.”

Bill Moynihan, chairman of the WWII Veteran’s Recognition Committee in Mission Viejo, said it is “cowardly and dishonest” of people to fabricate stories about being in the military. He said it dishonored those who served.

He also was still steamed about the Supreme Court’s original decision.

“If the Supreme Court is saying it’s OK to be dishonest, it’s setting the morals of our country in the wrong direction,” he said. “The Supreme Court is going to have to answer to the good Lord above, and I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.”

The move to target those who make false claims about military service and honors has been the focal point of several groups, including one Internet site that complies a list of those caught lying and features a link to other sites that track those engaged in telling fictitious stories about their time in the military.

Jack Hammett, a veteran who survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor and works on the Freedom Committee in Costa Mesa, said he spent the first 72 hours after the Japanese attacked working triage and body identification.

In those hours after the attack, he said that he “didn’t know if my wife was alive or dead” and that he saw about 300 bodies.

The experience – just like that of anyone who served in the military – is earned.

“You put your name on the line that says you give your life to Uncle Sam,” Hammett said. “Whether you’re a cook or a rifleman, you’re entitled to something that someone who never served should not get. These guys paid their dues.”

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